Gall. FRANZ JOSEPH, the founder of phrenology, was born at Tiefenbronn, near Pforzheim, on the borders of Baden and Württemberg, 9th March 1758. He studied medicine at Strasburg and Vienna, and settled in the latter city in 1785 as a physician. From his boyhood he had been attracted by the problems arising out of the relations between the powers of mind, the functions of the brain, and the external characters of the cranium. In 1796 he began to give courses of lectures on Phrenology (q.v.) in Vienna; but the lectures were prohibited in 1802 by the Austrian government as being subversive of the accepted religion. Along with Spurzheim (q.v.), who became his associate in 1804, Gall quitted Vienna in 1805, and began a lecturing tour through Germany, Holland, Sweden, and Switzerland. He reached the height of his fame when in 1807 he settled as a physician in Paris. On 14th March 1808 he and
Spurzheim presented to the Institute of France a memoir of their discoveries, on which a committee of the members of that body (including Pinel, Portal, and Cuvier) drew up an unfavourable Report. Thereupon Gall and Spurzheim published their memoir, Introduction au Cours de Physiologie du Cerveau; this was subsequently followed by Recherches sur le Système Nerveux (1809), and by Anatomie et Physiologie du Système Nerveux (4 vols. 1810-19), with an atlas of 100 plates. But, the two phrenologists having parted in 1813, the name of Gall alone is prefixed to vols. 3 and 4; and it alone is borne by a reprint of the physiological portion of the work, entitled Sur les Fonctions du Cerveau, et sur celles de chacune de ses Parties (6 vols. 1825). In 1811, in answer to accusations of materialism and fatalism brought against his system, Gall published Des Dispositions Innées de l'Âme et de l'Esprit. He continued to practise medicine and pursue his researches at Montrouge, near Paris, till his death, 22d August 1828.